This Blue

National Book Award Finalist

A vital, exhilarating new collection of poems from the National Book Critics Circle nominee


From lichens to malls to merchant republics, it's "another day in this here cosmos," in Maureen N. McLane's stunning third poetry collection, This Blue. Here are songs for and of a new century, poems both archaic and wholly now. In the middle of life, stationed in our common "Terran Life," the poet conjures urban pigeons, Adirondack mountains, Genoa, Andalucía, Belfast, Parma; here is a world sounded out, broken, possibly shareable, newly named: "Take it up Old Adam— / everyday the world exists / to be named." This Blue is a searching and a singing—intricate, sexy, smart.